Archive for the ‘Library’ Category

The City of Berkeley sought to construct a library that would both serve as a model for sustainable design as well as a community hub for its culturally diverse neighborhood. With the existing library spatially out of date for contemporary requirements and future adaptability, the design team recommended the construction of a new zero net energy (ZNE) structure. Extensive study had revealed the embodied energy required to construct a new ZNE facility would be offset by the ongoing cost of maintaining the existing structure within one year’s time.

The library building of the Extraordinary Collection of the University of Amsterdam on the Oude Turfmarkt forms an entrance gateway to a unique collection. One of the centres of medieval literature is seated here in Amsterdam. The complex is a listed building and is a part of the historical canal-side facade. Research on the development of the historical facade played a role in the concept forming for this library.

Project for a kiosk on the lakefront of Chicago. Waterfronts are special places. A meeting point between earth and sea, the horizon is exposed. More than elsewhere the sky is present, it illuminates and color permeates the place. The project aims to exacerbate this feeling by framing the views and accentuating the light of the moment.

North End Free Library and Public Bench Designed by TCA Architects Opens in Hamilton (Hamilton, Ontario) – July 24, 2015 – The North End Free Library is open and lending books in Hamilton. This tactical urbanism intervention is a ‘take a book, leave a book’ gathering place – a civic gesture and public amenity that blurs the lines between public and private. It is about creating community and celebrating literacy in Hamilton’s waterfront North End neighbourhood.

The architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) have won the design competition for the new construction of the Suzhou Library in China. The start of construction has been scheduled for 2016 and the opening of the complex for the end of 2017.

The site where we developed the extension of the existing school is located in the southeast of Alcala de Guadaira, a new urbanized area called \”Los Cercadillos \”; the neighborhood is still in development, ending its limit towards the Guadaira River in the south.

The studio residence is a free-standing building that completes an ensemble of experience and use in relation to a pre-existing house and a landscape. The new building contains a small drawing studio, workroom and kiln tucked beneath a library and a bedroom suite that overlook a double height sculpture space. It connects to the pre-existing house via two bridges: an upper bridge that extends from the living room to a new roof garden floating before the Catskills; and a lower bridge that ties the studio back into the hillside.

Since 2001, the centre of Zaanstad has been transformed to agree with the style of the nearby UNESCO World Heritage site the Zaanse Schans. Architectural highlights of this requirement include the city hall in shape of oversized Zaan houses and the Inntel hotel, which appears as a large stack of the same green houses. The new Cultural Cluster is the next step in this urban plan. The question was raised of how to continue the Zaan style given these existing variations of the traditional house, and also how to secure a clear identity for each of the established cultural institutions within the larger envelope of a single building.